Milk Crafting 101

I like making things and I've wanted to make my own cheese for years. But I've lacked courage to start on my own...it seems so much more than a recipe. Enter the Institute of Domestic Technology and their cheese making courses (and so much more). I came across their site last month and Raelene let me sign up for their 3 course milk-crafting series. The course is fantastic and I can't wait for my rennet to arrive in the mail...now I just need to find good milk.

Here's a little of what I learned, in pictures.
We started off with taste tests. I could tell the difference between raw whole cow's milk (6%) and store bought pasteurized, homogenized whole milk (3.25%). The latter is sweeter and the former heavier (because all its yummy cream is still there). I could only recognize the goat but couldn't tell them apart.

Then we made Paneer. It's an Indian cheese that uses lemon juice (instead of rennet). It only need to hang for a couple hours so you'll is actual batch below in the lunch pictures.

Yogurt and creme fraiche demonstrations.

Straining keifer

Keifer grains - made of rennet and yeast that have a nice symbiotic relationship.

Yogurt, keifer, and creme fraiche taste testing.

MAKING CHEVRE

Step 1: Get milk from a goat

This is Rue. We used her milk for several of our projects.

Milking station.

Step 1b. Don't get rammed while watching the chickens. This is one of those things you don't learn from a text book.

Step 2: Make curd

Prepare rennet. Use distilled water.

Let curd form

Test curd for clean break

Hang curd to achieve desired texture

Step 3: Salt the Chevre



 

Enjoy!

Off to lunch



 

Roasted red pepper soup with creme fraiche.

Best. Soup. Ever. 

Cucumber salad with Paneer.

Making cottage cheese

Curd cutting

Curd testing

Curd cooling

Curd tasting (yellow is fresh, white is store bought)

- jmb

Sausage Making Begins

All my supplies have arrived and I've got the casings soaking for the first batch when I get back from fromangering (neologism that I will use for cheese making. I may be a dork, but I'll be a trendsetting dork)




Yup, that's definitely a slippery intestine. I had to break out all my boy scout knot skills to untie 12 feet of this mess. Yummmmm.

- jmb

Tzatziki and souvlaki

Feeling some Greek vibes tonight. I used the Williams-Sonoma mediterranean cookbook for these ones. I need some practice with the tat-the cucumbers seemed too wet, but still very good. As for the soul, my meat must not have been fatty enough because it didn't cook up at all like the picture, but that's the only lamb I could get, and it was still an enjoyable dinner.


 
 
 

We have a fan!

- jmb

Pizza Fail, Calzone Improv

I've been making pizza a lot the past few weeks but a recent drop in temperature screwed up my rhythm and I started working the dough too soon and ruined it for pizza making. So I forced it into a calzone. Ugly, but mostly effective.

Pesto, red onion, goat cheese.

Not restaurant quality...

...but still yummy.

- jmb

Roasted Cauliflower

Raelene is big on vegetables. Me, I'm not opposed. And I've been trying to work them into my cooking more since they are a more economical option than my carnivorous tendencies. So when I came across a tweet from Ruhlman showing his roasted cauliflower with brown butter I had to give it a try. The recipe is here, but knowing that the ingredients are cauliflower, butter and salt, you should be able to figure the rest out from the pictures. It's that deliciously easy.

Prepping.

High tech butter dispersment.

Basting.

Drooling.

I've never had cauliflower whole before but is quickly jumped onto my list of favorites and will be making frequent appearances.

- jmb

Happy Birthday Little Man

Raelene's big into birthdays. My family never really was, but I'm down with the festivities. Here's her handiwork: (I made the buttercream frosting, which reminds me, if you're going to use butter, use good butter. We decided to use Costco unsalted butter to pinch a couple pennies. Ya it, like trying to cook on a budget, sucked. If you're going to do the work use the best ingredients. Rant over. Rainbow cake on)


 

Friends and family

Emeryck, contemplating the bubbly-bubbleness of bubbles.

 

Happy 4th Birthday Reagan

(do I get an award for most egregious [mis]use of parenthetical insertion following a parenthetical insertion following a semicolon?)

- jmb

Searching For Panna Cotta

I've only ever made panna cotta with Giada DeLaurentis' recipe that uses honey as the sweetener. It's very good, but I wanted something new so I decided to try a version in the Bon Appetit dessert cookbook Raelene got for her birthday.




The BA method of incorporating the gelatin was much more convoluted methodologically speaking and without having samples of both panna cottas right in front of me I can't really tell any difference in outcome as far as texture is concered.




The BA panna cotta had a very subtle/weak taste and really depended on the berries. This may make it compliment the berry compote with which it is paired in the book but it only added texture and not flavor to the fresh berries. Not inspiring, so the search continues.

- jmb